Interview #1: Stickman

I spoke with Stickman of Fury of Five/Boxcutter/being hard fame recently about his experiences in hardcore. He was a natural choice for me to interview, since I've been made fun of by friends for years for quoting Fury of Five lyrics most of my waking hours, forcing others to listen to Boxcutter nonstop on road trips, etc. He was kind enough to freely and candidly answer all of my questions and let me use his interview as the first one on the blog. Enjoy.

Introduction

I started this because hardcore is very important to me. I want to do all I can to get a thorough picture of hardcore itself, as it was and is--a sort of oral history that stretches from its beginnings up to today. However, being in my early 20s, my range of experience is limited (both by age and geography, among other things). These interviews seek to open windows for others who are also passionate (or just curious) about this phenomenon of ours by providing a view of hardcore as it's been experienced in the lives of my participants. I'm very fortunate thus far in that a lot of intriguing people with all sorts of compelling (and oftentimes wild) accounts of their time in hardcore have volunteered to do this for me. It's only fair that I share some of them.

I will try my best to offer interviews with a variety of people who have had interesting and unique experiences and "careers" in hardcore throughout the years, whether playing the role of band member, promoter, longtime fan, photographer, or any combination of roles in the community.

What makes my interviews different? I feel that e-mail interviews and similar formats tend to elicit canned responses and limit the scope of what is shared. My aim here is to get a holistic view of hardcore, so I'm opting to audio record all of my interviews. From there, they're transcribed word-for-word (all the "uh"s and "you know"s and everything). For the research papers I'm doing, they are quoted and used in full. For the purposes of this blog, they'll be cleaned up here and there, but only when necessary, and never in a way that would disrupt the original meaning.

It is my policy to keep the content of the interviews, as well as the identity of the interviewees, private until (and only if) the interview is published on this blog. Some of the participants prefer to remain anonymous and won't be on here; some I want to save specifically for my papers; others have consented afterwards to allow me to make the interviews public on this blog.

Enjoy.